Minolta Dimage 5400

[raytoei]

hahaha.... becareful of what you (I) wish for....

i wished i had higher resolution from my scanners...
i wished i could see real grains from the negatives...

well, i bought this 10 year old scanner recently,
and boy is the 5400 quite a scanner, i never had some much grains
before, in fact, i am now wishing i had lesser grains....


here is a okay picture resized at 800x600...

however at 100% crop, this is at 2700 dpi.

I think i have to undo and relearn some of what i thought i
know about scanning, grains, developing etc.

With my Epson v700, the grains were sort of continuous/
contiguous. However in 5400, the grains are sharper and more
discrete.

Also, with the 700, i tweaked the histogram to get a dull, flat but
rich image, ripe for pp. But for the Minolta 5400, I find the
default sw a bit too high in contrast. I tried vuescan with
Chris Crawford's Vuescan settings from his excellent website,
"White Balance" and set White and Blackpoint to zero.


raytoei

 

[crispy12]

The white dots to the left of the stem of the glass looks a bit unusual to me. Have you tried taking the RAW files and processing manually?

 

[anerjee]

Ray, that is not film grain you are seeing. It is a scanner artifact caused by several factors. Take a look at this.

Salt grain in negative scans - ColorNeg - Your RAW converter for negative scans

 

[raytoei]

Some comparison scans.

1. Epson v700/2400dpi/ histogram adjusted for rich capture

2. Minolta Dimage 5400/ 2400dpi /Default setting

3. Minolta Dimage 5400/ 2400dpi / HW Grain Dissolver

4. Minolta Dimage 5400/ 2400dpi / HW Grain Dissolver + Vue Scan Grain Reduction set to Medium

5. Minolta Dimage 5400/ 2400dpi / Just Vue Scan Grain Reduction set to Medium

raytoei

 

[raytoei]

This time resized and PPed.

1. Epson v700/2400dpi/ PP applied

2. Minolta Dimage 5400/ 2400dpi /PP applied

3. Minolta Dimage 5400/ 2400dpi / HW Grain Dissolver / PP applied

4. Minolta Dimage 5400/ 2400dpi / HW Grain Dissolver + Vue Scan Grain Reduction set to Medium / PP applied

5. Minolta Dimage 5400/ 2400dpi / Just Vue Scan Grain Reduction set to Medium / PP Applied

raytoei

 

[kgston]

The white dots to the left of the stem of the glass looks a bit unusual to me. Have you tried taking the RAW files and processing manually?

Ray, that is not film grain you are seeing. It is a scanner artifact caused by several factors. Take a look at this.

Salt grain in negative scans - ColorNeg - Your RAW converter for negative scans

The white dots as crispy12 mentions could be the salt grains anerjee mentioned. But everything else is without a doubt, grain. Its the same "pattern" you would use to focus your image onto the paper for darkroom printing.

 

[raytoei]

Observations.

* 2400 dpi was chosen over 2700 or 5400 to be similar to my epson scans.
* grain is exaggerated because the Neopan 400 film was push
processed and developed in room temp water.

At 100%, the epson picture isn't as detailed as the other 100% crops, however
the overall image resized and post-processed still looked good,
and in my opinion, the post-processed epson pic looks nicest.


raytoei